I move:—
That a sum not exceeding £413,630 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending the 31st day of March, 1951, for Salaries and Expenses in connection with Forestry (No. 13 of 1946), including a Grant-in-Aid for Acquisition of Land.
The work of the Forestry Division during the past year has been devoted, on the one hand, to preparations for the expanded programme and, on the other, to the carrying out of the normal annual programme.
In the matter of land acquisition, this has been very satisfactory, as during the last year the Forestry Division acquired 9,122½ acres, as compared with 3,777 acres during the preceding year. Agreement has also been reached with private owners for the purchase of 10,867 acres. The corresponding position last year was that agreement had been reached for the purchase of 6,427 acres. In addition, offers have been issued, or will issue very shortly, for the purchase of 10,634 acres from private owners. The Land Commission is also constantly on the watch for suitable land for afforestation and it is expected that 15,369 acres will be transferred to the Forestry Division in the near future. There are also some 4,207 acres which have been jointly inspected and which it is hoped the Land Commission will be in a position to transfer at a later date. In spite of my request last year, offers of isolated areas of from one to 20 acres are still being received in considerable numbers. Such offers are only a waste of time for everybody concerned, unless the land offered is contiguous to existing State forests. A second feature is that lands are being offered at fantastic prices, far in excess of what they would fetch in the open market. I want again to bring to the notice of the public that small offers such as these, unless they are situated close to an existing forest, will not be considered and that a special grant of £10 per acre is available to every private landowner who wishes to plant any area from one acre upwards.
Except for a very limited area of arable land still required for nursery purposes, the type mainly required must be purchasable at not more than £8 per acre in fee simple, and it is perfectly useless to offer inferior grazing land at prices from £15 to £50 per acre.
The position at the time the Government announced the expansion in the forestry programme was that an entirely inadequate staff was available in the Department to deal with the huge number of offers that started to pour in the moment the expansion was announced. That position has been improved but still not enough to my satisfaction yet. The total number of acquisition officers is now eight and I will not be satisfied until that number is doubled. Each offer must be inspected personally by an acquisition officer. The land must be appraised for suitability, for the type of timber which will develop best on it and must be valued for price. A very exhaustive report has to be furnished by the acquisition officer in each case.
An outstanding event took place during the year and that was the establishment at Dundrum Sawmills in Tipperary of two drying kilns which were opened a short time ago and which are already working very satisfactorily. This is only a beginning. The purpose of these kilns is to put on the market. Irish grown and Irish sawn timber in as good a condition as the best of foreign imported. The quality of Irish grown timber is second to none in the world, in my opinion, and it is in the failure of the after felling treatment that Irish timber has been looked upon as being inferior to foreign.
The sawmills at Dundrum have been completely rebuilt and reorganised and I am happy to inform the House that this is now one of the most up-to-date sawmills in the country. A similar reconstruction of Cong will take place as soon as possible, as the present site is unsuitable and the machinery is, to say the least of it, antiquated. It is hoped to erect two, if not four, drying kilns in Cong as soon as circumstances permit.
The nursery acreage has been increased appreciably during the year but will, inside the next two years, have to be increased still further until a total nursery acreage of something in the region of 750 acres is reached. The full nursery acreage will not be necessary until about this time next year as by that time the increased quantity of seed sown last year will need sufficient ground for the planting out prior to the final act of planting in the forest. The total amount of seeds sown last spring was 14,200 lbs. weight. Deputies may be surprised at this huge quantity but the experts say that taking into account failure to germinate, culls, the danger of a severe frost thinning their numbers, that any less quantity would be insufficient, if we are to have sufficient transplants for the 25,000 acre programme in the season 1952-53. Deputies who are keenly interested in forestry but who may not have sufficient experience of actual conditions must hold their impatience in check until these transplants are ready for planting out, as a period of three years must elapse between the sowing of the seed and the time when the young transplant is barely strong enough to be planted out in the forest.
The collection of home-grown seeds has been very satisfactory during the year and a record quantity will be available for sowing this spring. It is the belief in the Forestry Department that home-grown seeds will produce better transplants and eventually better matured seeds than foreign seeds.
An outstanding event was the completion of the forestry survey, which has revealed that there are 1,200,000 acres of land in this country more suitable to tree-planting than to any other possible use. Deputies should bear in mind that this 1,200,000 acres is all owned by private individuals and I should say that the vast bulk of it is owned by small farmers. This area is not to be taken as the limit of plantable land, but should be regarded as the minimum. I am having a map prepared on the basis of this survey. The map will show the areas in which there are greatest possibilities of afforestation and preference must be given in the development of these areas. I hope to make the map available to interested Deputies at an early date.
It is hoped to obtain this summer the advice of two foreign experts on soil suitability. The first, a Canadian of distinction and wide experience, will examine typical mountain areas scheduled as plantable and will advise upon the desirability and possibility of transferring these areas from their present use as rough grazing to forestry purposes. The second, a Finnish expert of international repute, will give us the benefit of the wide experience of the Finnish Forestry Service in the drainage and planting of boglands. The establishment of a research station is also being considered.
Because of the small planting programme which the Forestry Department were engaged in so far, it was easy to prepare by hand the small areas of unplantable or doubtful quality ground. With the expanded programme, it is anticipated that at least from 13,000 to 15,000 acres per year will have to be treated or prepared so as to ensure that a healthy, vigorous crop will follow. That brought me up against the position of mechanical preparation of this huge area, and it was decided to purchase our own equipment, which includes tractors of a heavy and special type, ploughs and other implements, also of a very heavy type. As the Forestry Department had none of this special equipment so far and had no experience of the most suitable type for the nature of work done, it was necessary for me to visit the Scottish and English forests where such equipment was at work, for the purpose of ascertaining the best type to suit our own conditions.
I hoped to exceed the 8,000 acres which we planted this year, but we had not sufficient transplants in the nurseries to reach the 10,000 acre mark which I was hoping we would be able to attain. The question of importing transplants thereupon arose and I decided not to import plants as they might introduce diseases into this country from which we are comparatively free at the moment. It is doubtful if the transplants would be available had we gone searching for them.
The Estimate for the coming year represents an increase of £144,760 on the amount provided for 1949-50, but does not contain provision for the increases in the wages of forestry labourers recently announced. The minimum wages paid to forest workers is now 62/- a week and I may find it necessary, at a later stage, to ask the Dáil for increased provision on this account in preference to curtailing the programme of operations contemplated.
In dealing with the different items in the Estimate, I propose to deal at length only with those sub-heads which show an appreciable difference as compared with last year.
Under sub-head A—Salaries, Wages and Allowances—£97,594—the increase, £6,250, is due mainly to an increase in the number of technical officers and to an increase in the rates of salary paid to foresters of all grades.
Under sub-head B—Travelling Expenses—£12,250—provision is made for the travelling expenses and allowances of the technical staff and of such of the clerical staff as are obliged to travel on official business. The increase of £2,250 is required on account of increased numbers and increased travelling for land acquisition purposes.
The provision under sub-head C— Acquisition of Land: Grant-in-Aid— £65,000—represents an increase of £40,000 over the amount provided last year. As this is a Grant-in-Aid, the balance at the end of the year is not surrendered but is carried over to the next year. The balance carried over from last year is approximately £23,250, making a total of £88,250 out of which about £6,000 will be required to pay Land Commission annuities and rents of leased lands, leaving a balance of approximately £82,050 for new purchases during the current financial year.
In sub-head C (2)—Forest Development and Maintenance—£428,330—the main item in the Forestry Estimates— some changes have been made in the form and the expenditure is now set out under the headings of nursery expenditure, capital, constructional and maintenance expenditure. Under the first heading is borne all the cost of raising transplants in the nursery to the stage at which they are fit to be planted out. To capital expenditure will be charged the cost of drainage and the initial preparation of land for planting and the construction of new roads and buildings. These will be mainly non-recurring and will not appear in the second or subsequent rotations. This heading will also bear the cost of new machinery, stores, etc. To constructional expenditure will be charged the cost of new fencing, planting and the replacement of failures, etc., and to maintenance the cost of the after-care of plantations including fence repair, drainage repairs, grass cleaning, etc.
Earlier on I gave some figures as to orders placed for supplies of seed and though it is not possible at this stage to state exactly what quantities will finally arrive or what precisely the home collection will amount to every effort is being made to build up stocks in the nurseries. Unfortunately, it is still difficult to secure adequate supplies of Pinus Contorta, a species which is showing remarkable ability to succeed on poor and exposed sites and on which, so far as can be foreseen at present, more and more reliance must be placed in future.
The growth of the plantations laid down in earlier years, which have now reached the thinning stage, necessitates a constantly increasing programme of road construction for extraction purposes and up to the present thinnings of all sorts continue to find a ready market. Additional roads, moreover, facilitate the movement of staff and equipment in the event of fire, a danger which grows continually with the increase in the area planted. On account of this danger it is desirable that foresters should be housed in suitable positions on or adjacent to the areas under their charge. At present many have to live at appreciable distances from their forests and this is a problem to which serious attention must be given at an early date. It is almost impossible in present circumstances to purchase suitable houses and the Department has been forced to consider the question of undertaking rather a large building programme. With this end in view, enquiries are being made into the possibilities of prefabricating suitable houses from the Department's own supplies of timber and it is hoped at an early date to make a start with one or two such buildings.
Under part (1) of sub-head C (2)— Timber Conversion—£91,945 -- provision is made for thinning and felling operations, formerly charged to cultural operations, and for the working of portable saw-milling units engaged in the preparation of nursery laths and of fencing stakes for the division's own use or for sale, etc. The division's own requirements of stakes increases yearly and while the demand for firewood is not very pressing, there are still a number of areas where it is in demand and in many cases cutting into firewood blocks is the only means of disposing of inferior timber which must be cleared to permit of the planting of more remunerative varieties. Many of the portable machines in stock have been in continual use for a number of years and are now no longer profitable to run. It will be necessary to replace them at an early date and the question of the most suitable type of machine to replace them is at present under consideration.
No increase is proposed in the provision under sub-head D—Advances for Afforestation—£2,000, out of which payment is made of the grant of £10 per acre payable, under certain conditions, to private landowners and local authorities carrying out planting operations on their own lands. For various reasons, relatively little advantage has been taken of this grant but, as soon as I am satisfied that there are adequate stocks available in the commercial nurseries, I intend to advertise the terms of the grant widely and I hope that many more people will take advantage of it.
The number of felling notices received during the past year shows a decline as compared with those received in the previous year but cover a somewhat higher number of trees. This seems to indicate a decline in the rather indiscriminate felling which arose out of war conditions and the scarcity of fuel and a return to more normal conditions of business in the trade in native timber.
Some success has been achieved in inducing compliance with the replanting obligations of felling licences and a slight improvement in the position is noticeable. The provisions of the Forestry Act of 1946, which make replanting conditions compulsory, not only on the licensee but also on his successors in title, will greatly strengthen the hands of the Forestry Division in dealing with this matter.
I should like to remind holders of licences granted under the 1928 Act that permission to fell trees contained in any licences issued under that Act will terminate on 31st March, 1951, and that after that date no further trees may be felled by virtue of such licences. Furthermore, any replanting conditions incurred under such licences must be carried out not later than 31st March, 1952. Persons concerned have, therefore, two planting seasons in which to clear themselves of liability. After that date they will be liable to prosecution without further warning.
In conclusion, I should like to take this opportunity of thanking the staff of the Forestry Division for the magnificent work they have done and the huge output, embracing so many different types of skilled activity, and I have every confidence now that the programme which the Government have set up as their goal will be attained and maintained.
